


Is Not That Strange?

by Tierfal



Category: No. 6 (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fix-It, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 04:45:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1115666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Words have tastes, and "home" is beginning to lose the flavor of ashes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Is Not That Strange?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crowmunculus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowmunculus/gifts).



> Apparently the novels do battle with my flufftastic headcanons, but as everyone who knows me is well-aware, I AM A REBEL. Disgustingly unrepentant domestic fluffball fix-it fic it is. :'D
> 
> This is for [Crow](http://crowmunculus.tumblr.com/), of COURSE; and for [S.](http://ilgaksu.tumblr.com/) & [S.](http://owraithe.tumblr.com/), who were telling me to watch the thing a full two years ago; and for [Alex](http://werenotinkansastoto.tumblr.com/); and for J. & J. for getting me to watch the thing once and for all. XD
> 
> ~~Also, be forewarned that I have not yet _begun_ to Shakespeare.~~

They start out staying with Karan.

It’s difficult to think of her as Shion’s _mother_. The resemblance is still there, as is of course the sheer _usefulness_ of the relation, but mothers have become a concept to Nezumi—an abstraction. A device. It’s just a _word_ , “mother”; it is a noun that is also a verb and occasionally an adjective, but it isn’t a _reality_.

More difficult still is _Mom_. Motherhood is a biological fact, an evolutionary imperative, an indication of genetic similarity, but the word that drops off Shion’s lips is so much _more_ than…

In any case, they stay.

He and Shion sleep on the lower of the bunk beds. It’s the same amount of space they had before—or maybe not; maybe it’s an inch narrower, possibly two. If Shion’s spine seems to settle up against Nezumi’s most nights, that’s why—one inch makes a considerable difference when the whole damn mattress is only a few dozen inches across. They have to stay a little closer, or Shion will fall off. That’s only logical.

It is curious, though, how you get used to the sound of someone else’s breathing in your ear.

Curious, too, how the smell of bread baking is so much _bigger_ than the taste. Curious how there’s something overpoweringly _peaceful_ about it.

Nezumi hates that. He hates feeling like he’s being _made_ to feel at home.

Shion has developed a tendency to sit on the balcony every evening while the sun goes down. As far as Nezumi can tell, he just… sits… there. He keeps his hands curled loosely on the table, and he sits very still with his back straight until the light dies and fades off of his face.

Tonight Karan tops the stairs and pauses with her arms full of newly-washed, half-folded sheets. Nezumi has decided that he hates that smell, too—clean laundry. It’s a fucking menace.

He tries to glare, tries to _challenge_ her to say something, with his spine stiff and his shoulders wide; every confrontation in his life so far has been a dogfight, and maybe that explains the company he kept.

It turns out that it’s very difficult to stare someone down when they blink just once at the way you’re leaning against the door and looking out before they start attending to the sheets.

Nezumi gives up on bristling and twitches the curtain aside with his fingertips again. Shion doesn’t appear to have moved a muscle.

“You could go out there,” Karan says mildly. “He wouldn’t mind.”

“I _know_ that,” Nezumi says. He’s not even sure which sentence he meant to address—does it matter?

He looks at Shion’s hair catching the deep orange of the dying sun, then at Karan’s—barely any longer, thick and dark like Shion’s was at first.

Like Shion’s was for a long time. It just _seems_ like it’s been this way forever; it just _seems_ like this is the realer aspect for him, like the inward and the outward finally agree—

Karan smooths the sheets out, tucks the blankets under the edges of the mattress, and saunters calmly back down the stairs.

Nezumi gives her an even thirty seconds to change her mind, but when he doesn’t hear her footsteps on the stairs, he opens the door and slips outside.

Shion’s left hand shifts just a fraction, but he doesn’t turn as Nezumi gets close.

“All right, genius,” Nezumi says. “Your game-board; your rules. What now?”

Shion smiles. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot.”

“I fucking hope so,” Nezumi says. “Much as I would _love_ to sit around watching your mother bake every kind of bread known to mankind for the rest of my miserable li—”

“The books,” Shion says.

Nezumi prods at the knobby vertebra at the top of Shion’s spine with a bent knuckle. “What about them?”

“We could reprint them,” Shion says. “Start a bookstore—maybe even a library. The novelty of them won’t wear off for a long time, and even when it does… there’s a reason _you_ still have them, isn’t there?”

Nezumi curls his fingers into the wispy hairs at the nape of Shion’s neck, then twists them in higher. He tugs—harder than he needs to, maybe—to make Shion look up at him instead of at the sun setting past the broken wall.

“I lost you,” he says. “For a minute. Back there.”

The left corner of Shion’s lips lifts. “Safu always had a way of talking people into things.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Nezumi says.

Shion’s eyes are gleaming in the last of the light. “I almost lost you, too,” he says. “But I told you to stay. And you listened.”

“Yeah, well,” Nezumi says, tugging harder. Shion’s eyes slide halfway shut. “You’re kind of a demanding little shit.”

Shion’s smile spreads into a grin.

“A thousand books of poetry,” he says, “and that’s the best you can do?”

Nezumi tugs one more time and then ruffles until Shion squirms.

“I think we’re through with the tragedies,” he says.


End file.
